Echo Hemisphere

2: Earth's Downfall, Orth's Exodus

Earth maybe exploded. Maybe it wasted away under all the gasses the original humans let their machines give off. Maybe it was the case that it was swallowed by the expanding sun. No one really knows what happened. No pure human had an absolutely sure theory of what would happen when their ancestors left.

The Earth was in so much danger, no one was completely certain what the destruction was that would lead to the humans' death. That's why the humans aware of what would happen soon evacuated in the Samaritan, traveling light years away from their home planet, Earth.

Samaritan was a hand engineered spacecraft made by the most brilliant anti-cyberspace scientists, the ones who led this called themselves Johnnie Doeman and Kory'ama Bleach. They gathered other anti-cybers, people who didn't believe that living in a bed attached to cyberspace and being fed by tube was productive or worthy of attention or time.

Samaritan took off on an unmarked day, no one bothered to use calendars at that time, though the anti-cyber humans used day-night cycles to track their activities.

The humans landed on Orth generations later on the planet we know as Orth. The conditions were very suitable for what they were originally accustomed to living in.

Soon after learning about the land and what food they could eat, the Pigmerum, so the humans called them, brought some of them to their own civilizations. Pigmerum lived in tribes based on their fur color, the yellow-furred Pigmerum lived with their own, as the blue-furred and red-furred. The Pigmerum tribes kidnapped other tribes' members with a different fur color and forced them to be slaves. The yellow-furred Pigmerum were the usual targets of these scenarios, evolving their natural strength.

The humans who chose to not to live with them established their own colony somewhere in the Echo Hemisphere, the side of Orth that is mostly ocean and small islands.

Echo Hemisphere receives its name from legends of people traveling out into it hearing voices and seeing things familiar to them, creating a "time echo" around the victims. Stories of time echoes happen within the Echo Hemisphere when the victim went through a traumatic experience or intense mood swings. Time echoes usually drive the victim insane, causing them to attempt to kill or harm themselves or anything that comes in contact with them.

Moving on, the Pigmerum and humans found that crossbreeding had successful results of humanlike children being born with some exaggerated features and hair color that could be labeled "unnatural" to pure human standards. The Pigmerum soon died off from age and became extinct from lack of popularity of having one-species offspring. Having "hybrid children" was a trend until they completely populated the planet centuries later. This time was called the 'hybrid era.'

And now, here we are, on Orth, in this society based on natural hair pigment. Blue as the highest class, where they can control the country and do whatever they please. The lowest class is yellow, where they live in the slums or work as low-paid workers.

"What about green?"

"Green? Those don't exist, or at least they shouldn't."

"Why?"

"You seriously don't know? They can obtain a rare supernatural power that could eventually lead to our own destruction."

"What is that power?"

"What I know, their power is exaggerated immensely from what their parents were able to do. That's all we know. Actually, there was a green-haired man at the beginning of the 'hybrid era,' he almost destroyed a few cities before he was put to death. So why don't you know about this? Were you just put in the school system or something?"

"Actually, I was."

"What's your name, kid?"

"Edward Murfajje."

"That's a high-class name, why don't you know all this?"

"I was homeschooled forever."

"And you're just now going to private school?"

"I guess so."